The Tichborne Tattoo

While America was gripped by the Lindbergh kidnapping case in the 1930s, Victorian England was obsessed by the Tichborne case in the 1860s and 70s.

Put simply, Roger Tichborne was born in 1829 and was the heir to the Tichborne baronetcy, estate and fortune. He was educated at Stonyhurst and then joined the 6th Dragoon Guards. After an unhappy love affair Roger resigned his commission and sailed to Chile for a belated Gap Year in 1853 aged 24. The following year he sailed for Jamaica. The ship was assumed to have been lost with all hands, as only some wreckage was recovered. However, there were rumours that another ship had found some survivors and taken them to Australia. Roger’s mother clung to this hope.

Roger’s father died in 1862 and, as Roger was presumed dead, the title,etc passed to his younger brother. Not all younger sons are financially incontinent but Alfred was. Meanwhile a clairvoyant assured the dowager Lady Tichborne that her eldest son was alive and well in Australia. Accordingly she placed advertisements in newspapers seeking information and offering a reward.

In 1865 a Claimant came forward in the shape of one Thomas Castro, a bankrupt butcher in Wagga Wagga. During his bankruptcy examination he mentioned an entitlement to property in England and also of experiencing a shipwreck. Furthermore he smoked a briar pipe carrying the initials “R C T”. Early in 1866 the ne’er-do-well Alfred died and old Lady T enthusiastically embraced the idea that her eldest son had survived, even if he hadn’t proved a successful butcher on the Wagga Wagga high street.

Early in 1867 the Claimant met Lady T, who immediately accepted him as her son and settled an income of £1,000 a year on him, to keep the wolf from the door. Other members of her family were more sceptical. However, the Claimant attracted a variety of supporters: his former army batman, a former slave on the Duke of Buckingham’s plantation in Jamaica, Lord Rivers, the MP for Guildford, Guildford Onslow, and a distant cousin, Anthony Biddulph.

The public was enchanted by the disputed claim and it was much discussed. One such debate took place in a railway carriage. The passengers were divided on the merits of the claim. One passenger did not offer an opinion and they sought his view. He was sure the Claimant was an imposter. He had been at Stonyhurst with Roger and remembered that Roger had a tattoo on his arm: a heart and cross and anchor. Furthermore he remembered adding to this the initials “R C T”. It just shows that a Bellew can turn his hand to anything because this first class passenger, I doubt he was a first class tattooist, was my great-great grandfather, Edward Joseph, Lord Bellew.

Lord Bellew was a black sheep. You may recall what befell him in The Ghastly Affair.  The first case did not come to Court until 1871 and went on for ten months. Lord Bellew appeared as a witness and his testimony and the absence of tattoos on the Claimant’s arm were instrumental in the Claimant’s case being demolished. He was arrested on a charge of perjury and committed to Newgate Prison. The Claimant did did not throw in the towel and, on his release, resumed the fight for his inheritance. A further trial began in 1873 and lasted for 188 court days. Almost seven years elapsed between the start of the first trial in the Court of Common Pleas and the end of the second, criminal, trial in the Court of Queen’s Bench.

Unfortunately, during the trial the Claimant’s counsel tried to discredit Edward Bellew’s evidence by revealing his adultery. However, the jury eventually found that the Claimant was born Arthur Orton in Wapping in 1834 and he went back to prison.

The most thorough description of these drawn-out proceedings is provided by Lord Maugham in his 1936, The Tichborne Case. There is much detail including a transcription of part of Lord Bellew’s evidence.